Nerd News

You know, even though I'm officially a Harvard (Law) grad, you gotta admit it when the other side kicks your butt...

The "Harvard Pep Squad" ran up and down the aisles of Harvard Stadium at The Game Nov. 20. They had megaphones in hand and their faces were painted as they encouraged the crowd to hold up the 1,800 red and white pieces of construction paper they had handed out. It would read "Go Harvard," they said.

But the 20 "Pep Squad" members were actually Yale students. And when the Harvard students, faculty and alumni held up their pieces of paper -- over and over again -- they spelled out "We Suck" in giant block letters the whole stadium could read.

The brainchild of Pierson students Michael Kai '05 and David Aulicino '05, the "We Suck" prank was originally designed for the 2003 Harvard-Yale Game. But rather than hand out the paper in person to the crowd, they taped the paper to the stadium seats before the game began. The prank derailed when security guards, trying to clear the stadium out during a pre-game bomb scare, asked Kai, Aulicino and their cohorts to leave.

Rather than forget the prank, though, the pair became only more determined to have it succeed as seniors.

"We knew we only had one more chance at it," Kai said. "To have to think about it for an entire year was really painful."

But the elapsed time also gave the devious duo an opportunity to rethink logistics. Rather than tape the papers to the seats, they created a system to have the Harvard crowd pass out the 1,800 cards themselves. The "Harvard Pep Squad" went to each row and handed out a pre-ordered stack of the red and white papers. In five minutes, Kai and Aulicino said, all the papers were passed out.

It took a great deal of planning, however, including a road trip to Boston. Kai and Aulicino attended the Oct. 9 Harvard-Cornell football game in Cambridge, simply to scout out the stadium and count the number of rows.

And then there were the disguises, which included "Harvard Pep Squad" T-shirts the Yale students designed themselves and red and white face paint. Cohort Dylan Davey '05 said they even had Harvard student identification cards, created by a fellow Piersonite. Kai and Aulicino declined to say exactly how much money they spent on the prank, except that it was "too much." Davey estimated it to be a few hundred dollars.

"If it didn't work, it would have been pretty sad that we put so much effort and money into it. But all that money was totally worth it," Kai said.

(hat tip: Opinion Journal)

Nothing worse than getting your butt handed to you by Elis. Of course, Harvard won the game 35-3, and has won four in a row. I guess Yale needs a laugh. To quote Monty Burns, "I don't know why Harvard bothered to show up. They barely won this year."